"Letting lawyers make laws is like letting doctors make diseases."
Anonymous
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Political Parties
"Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships."
Thomas H. Naylor
Capitulation and Betrayal
After months of wrangling over continuing resolutions and the threat of a government shutdown, which is a farce all by itself, the ruling class got together and put together their budget deal, a deal they heralded as a significant reduction in spending. All the news organizations were saying what a great victory it was for Speaker Boehner and the new Republican majority in the house, a majority that only exists because of the TEA party. Even the president had been crowing about its significance in reducing federal spending. The amount of this hatchet job to the Federal budget? $38 billion for the next six months.
That, my fellow patriots, is an insult to all of us who understand the dire straights we’re in. That means we will cut a little more than $3 billion a month. Consider that we are borrowing between one and two hundred billion dollars a month and cutting that monthly deficit by three billion is insignificant. $38 billion is only a third of the budget of the worthless department of education. There are stupid earmark projects that cost more that $38 billion. Back when the Republicans said they were going to cut one hundred billion dollars, I derided that amount as insignificant in the face of a $1.5 trillion deficit. This is like deciding to forgo your Starbucks coffee now and then while continuing to run up thousands of dollars in credit card debt every month. It is a worthless gesture.
Consider even Congressman Ryan’s budget. He says he is going to cut the budget by $6 trillion over the next ten years. That sounds like a lot but at our current pace we are going to borrow $15 trillion in those same ten years. That means under this dramatic plan of draconian cuts, ten years from now our children will have a $23 trillion dollar debt instead of a $29 trillion dollar debt. Certainly I give credit to congressman Ryan for making a credible attempt and taking on entitlements in creative ways but this is not going to cut it.
We are in real, serious trouble.. As we approach the third anniversary of the first TEA party demonstration, I am reminded of the words I spoke on April 15, 2009. I stated that we "stand on the edge of the abyss" as a country. As I, and we, have learned, our situation was worse than we thought and rapidly becoming catastrophic. We need $6 trillion in cuts over three years and a complete overhaul in entitlements just to put us back on the edge. We need significant and drastic action, real drastic action, not what counts for "drastic" and "extreme" by Washington standards. We are not going to get it, not now, not with the next budget, not ever with the ruling class still deeply entrenched.
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| Mike Calpino |
That, my fellow patriots, is an insult to all of us who understand the dire straights we’re in. That means we will cut a little more than $3 billion a month. Consider that we are borrowing between one and two hundred billion dollars a month and cutting that monthly deficit by three billion is insignificant. $38 billion is only a third of the budget of the worthless department of education. There are stupid earmark projects that cost more that $38 billion. Back when the Republicans said they were going to cut one hundred billion dollars, I derided that amount as insignificant in the face of a $1.5 trillion deficit. This is like deciding to forgo your Starbucks coffee now and then while continuing to run up thousands of dollars in credit card debt every month. It is a worthless gesture.
Consider even Congressman Ryan’s budget. He says he is going to cut the budget by $6 trillion over the next ten years. That sounds like a lot but at our current pace we are going to borrow $15 trillion in those same ten years. That means under this dramatic plan of draconian cuts, ten years from now our children will have a $23 trillion dollar debt instead of a $29 trillion dollar debt. Certainly I give credit to congressman Ryan for making a credible attempt and taking on entitlements in creative ways but this is not going to cut it.
We are in real, serious trouble.. As we approach the third anniversary of the first TEA party demonstration, I am reminded of the words I spoke on April 15, 2009. I stated that we "stand on the edge of the abyss" as a country. As I, and we, have learned, our situation was worse than we thought and rapidly becoming catastrophic. We need $6 trillion in cuts over three years and a complete overhaul in entitlements just to put us back on the edge. We need significant and drastic action, real drastic action, not what counts for "drastic" and "extreme" by Washington standards. We are not going to get it, not now, not with the next budget, not ever with the ruling class still deeply entrenched.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Hobgoblins
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
H.L. Mencken
Monday, April 11, 2011
Freedom
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too."
Somerset Maugham
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